You Were Always Mine (7 Brides for 7 SEALs Book 1)

by Cerise DeLand

  “Abby, wait up!”

  She halted long enough to fumble in her purse for her sunglasses.

  Nick caught up to her and stood before her. His fingers ran up and down her arms. “He’s fine. He’s dealing with this.”

  “Is he?” She searched Nick’s eyes, the blue so beguiling she could forget Terry’s distress for a second. “Oh, Nick, he’s angry.”

  “Resentful, yes. Of you and I who walk around without all those tubes and monitors. Of me because I represent what he once did. And he hates that he’s stuck in that bed. Those are reactions and emotions that can yield a few good benefits, Abby.”

  She hung her head, then once more gazed up at Nick. “I’m grateful you were there. You knew what to say to him. I—I clutched.”

  “You were fine. Don’t be so critical. Just like you have to learn to deal with him, he has to learn how to communicate about his condition with other people. He’s not helpless. He’s not a cripple unless he allows himself to become one.”

  “I hope they give him a few sessions with a psychologist.”

  “I bet they do. They have to get him on the road to objectivity.” He gathered her close and stroked her hair. He would give everything he had in this world to make her look on the bright side of this. Why was she becoming so important to him in such a short time? He didn’t fall quickly for women. Those he met were so unimpressive, so insignificant to him that he often doubted if he was capable of love. But Abby stirred him in every cell of his body. “I have to go to class. I’ll walk you to the gate so you can catch a taxi.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Go back to the hotel. Take a bath. Go for a swim. Catch a nap. Take care of you.” He caught an errant lock of hair and pushed it over her ear. “I’ll see you around five-thirty. We’ll go swimming.”

  “And dinner is on me tonight.”

  “Deal.” He smiled and turned them both toward the entrance to the post, his arm around her waist. “I’m dying to see you in that swimsuit.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Beware. I like doughnuts. A lot.”

  “An all-American girl.” I’d love to have you as my American girl.

  “You’ve been told, sailor.”

  “Hey. I’ve seen you covered head to toe in your Santa pjs and those nearly knocked me to the North Pole.”

  She elbowed him. “Careful, pal, or you’re sleeping on the floor tonight.”

  ****

  The hotel pool had seemed too crowded and noisy to appeal to her when she walked past. The shower was a better idea, and afterward, she put on a pair of beige crop pants and a black halter to wander around the shops in the lobby. She was too jumpy to take a nap.

  Her visit with Terry had unnerved her. He might be healing well physically, but he was not coping emotionally. She should not be surprised. All her reading about PTSD among soldiers indicated that recovery took concentrated effort by the soldier and his family. Sometimes it took years of behavioral modification. More than that, it took dedication, patience, and love.

  She stood for a moment, swallowing hard on the thought of that last word. The love she bore her brother was not what popped to mind. No. At the moment, all she saw, all she felt was focused on Nick Reardon. He was so kind, so endearing. He was a balm to her fears and a boon to her happiness here.

  She licked her lips. Tasting him last night had been the most thrilling kiss she’d ever shared with a man. It was foolish to put such stock in a simple meeting of lips, but oh, dear heaven. Their kiss had not been simple or ordinary. Not brief, but lingeringly sensuous. What man took the time to kiss like that? In his arms, she was not only safe and protected but enraptured.

  And she knew him for hours only. Hours.

  Yet she adored his looks, his humor. The way his eyes took her, held her, spoke to her of kisses and caresses, blessed by the sun and joined together in bliss.

  She ran a hand over her head and pulled at the end of her ponytail. You’re turning into a goofy teenager, Abigail. Star-struck by the SEAL in the starched and pressed white uniform. Get a grip.

  She walked along the hallway toward the bar and checked her watch. Nick wouldn’t return for another half hour or more. Not in the mood to drink a cocktail alone, she stopped to look at the items in the glass-walled showcases. Flags from the wars of the Texans against the Mexicans and the Civil War stood with the one from Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the Spanish-American conflict. She saw old sketches of ranches and the frontier town that San Antonio once was. She admired photographs of famous city leaders and then she came to stand in front of a pen and ink sketch of a young woman.

  She was no more than twenty, dewy with youth and vigor. She faced forward, but at an angle to the artist who had drawn her. Her hair, obviously light not dark, was parted down the middle, her coiffure trained back over her ears, ribbons hanging from her elaborate hair coil to the lace-edged collar of her gown. Her dress buttoned down the front, the sleeves tucked and gathered at the shoulders into a balloon-shape, her bodice tightly fitted to her torso, flaring into a wide skirt. Sitting, she gazed out at the world, appearing shy but happy, her eyes alight with admiration. Or was it, perhaps…love?

  Abby clamped a hand to her throat and peered more closely at the portrait. The woman’s face was oval, her eyes very large, luminous even in the plain India ink. She had high cheekbones and small ears, a generous mouth that by today’s standards of beauty would be called lush and beguiling. And every cell in Abby’s body cried out in recognition.

  She read the placard beneath the portrait. The woman’s name meant nothing to her. Only her remarkable looks spoke of a connection too strong to ignore. But what precisely was that connection? Until Abby knew the whole story, she would wonder and worry.

  She stepped backward, gulped, dug her phone from her purse and hit her cousin’s number.

  “Hi, Karen.”

  “Hi, Abby. I’m sorry we couldn’t talk before this. The twins keep me hopping.”

  “I understand you’re busy.”

  “How’s Terry?”

  “Improving physically. Still on meds intravenously. I haven’t been able to talk to his doctors. He’s being stubborn and still won’t sign off on that. I’m going to visit again tomorrow, and I’ll pitch again for him to let me talk to his team. I’ll call you afterward.”

  “Thanks. We want to know, Abby. Jim says he’ll be in Austin for a conference next month and he could drive down to San Antonio to visit if Terry would like that.”

  “I’ll ask him and let you know tomorrow. Look, Karen, I just need to ask you if you had a chance to look for—”

  “Your Confederate colonel? Oh, Abby, I did. He is so real.”

  “He did exist?” Abby felt a jolt of delight.

  “You bet. Colonel Mabry Duhamill Stuart. Yes, honey, I found him in the extended genealogy tree and birth records in the old family Bible.”

  “Oh, Karen. Tell me about him.” Abby couldn’t take her eyes from the portrait of the young woman.

  “He was the first child and only son of the third son of Winston Stuart and his wife Mary Duhamill.”

  Abby remembered the stories about Winston Stuart, the orphan who had sailed from Portsmouth England in 1770 to Baltimore. He was the Virginia family’s founding father. Abby’s branch of the Stuarts descended from the first son of Winston.

  “Okay. And did you find out if Mabry fought in the Civil War?”

  “He did. First Virginia Cavalry. Hold on a minute will you? Jim ran a 5K race this morning and he’s napping, so I’m on duty with the boys. Wait.”

  Her ghost really had lived. Or still did. And he was a member of her family.

  “All right, Abby, I’m back. So I looked him up in the online records. Then I looked in the jpegs we scanned of each page of the old Stuart family Bible. Mabry was born in 1840. Married in 1864 at—oh you will love this—at Appomattox Court House to a Julia Merryweather from Culpepper.”

  “And did he have children? A profession? When did he d
ie?”

  “A lawyer in Fredericksburg, Virginia after the war. Had one son. Died in 1919 in his own bed.”

  Abby let out a huge sigh of relief that Mabry hadn’t died in the Menger. “So Mabry lived a long time.”

  “He did.”

  But why did he haunt room two-twenty-two of the Menger Hotel? “Do you know anything else about him? Did he leave any letters or records of any kind? If so, I’ll find them and read them when I come home. I’ll drive up to Stuart Hill if I have to.” Stuart Hill in Leesburg was the original home of Winston Stuart and had been a museum open to the public since 1960. Most of the family documents were kept in house’s private vaults, for relatives only. “Is there anything else about him that you can tell me now?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Was he kind, smart, melancholy? Was he in love with a woman from Texas?”

  Her cousin chuckled. “Texas? Although…hmm. There was something in the Bible about him going to San Antonio after the Civil War.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “The writing is very small and difficult to read. Tell you what, Abby, let me get the twins fed. I’ll read those scanned pages again of the Bible, and I’ll call you back in about twenty minutes, all right?”

  “Wonderful. Thanks, Karen.” Abby clicked off her phone and stood rooted to the floor before the sketch of the woman in the nineteenth-century garb.

  When her phone buzzed a few minutes later, she answered, her gaze still glued to the portrait.

  “Abby, I’ve got it.”

  Excited, Abby could hardly form the words. “Tell me.”

  “Mabry had a younger sister who fell in love with a Union officer.”

  A sister. “When was she born? Is that in the records?”

  “Yes. Born in 1844. Her name was Antoinette.”

  Antoinette. Abby clenched her teeth, trying to calm her shivering while her eyes shot to the name plaque on the portrait. “What else?”

  “You knew that the family house in Leesburg was taken over by the Yankees in the last year of the war, right?”

  Abby could barely breathe. “I did. They crossed the Potomac and used the house as headquarters and the barn as a hospital.”

  “That’s right. I had forgotten that,” Karen said. “Okay, in his will, Mabry writes that he had one regret in his life.”

  “What was that?”

  “His sister ran off with the Yankee captain after the war. He tracked her as far as San Antonio, but he never found her.”

  Never found her. Never? But wasn’t she here? How did her sketch get to the Menger if she hadn’t been here?

  “Abby?”

  “I’m here.” She took hold of her rampaging imagination. “I have news for you. Something you can add to the family notes.”

  “Okay. You sound strange, honey. What’s going on? What did you find?”

  “I found Mabry’s sister.”

  “What? How?”

  “I found her. Here in San Antonio. I’m looking at her. A self-portrait.” Abby leaned closer to the glass and read from the plaque, “Antoinette Stuart McCormick. Self-portrait.”

  “That’s fabulous! Oh, everyone will be so tickled we found another ancestor. McCormick, I bet, must be her married name. Hopefully, we can find them both in the county Census Records and add them to the museum. Oh, you are a genius.”

  “No, not really.” Mabry’s ghost showed up and made me ask the right questions.

  “But this is wonderful. How did you find her? Recognize her?”

  “It wasn’t hard. Antoinette is a Stuart, all right, because except for the fact that she had blonde hair, I look exactly like her.”

  Chapter Six

  Abby threw her key card on the desk in her room and plunked into the desk chair.

  What was she supposed to do with that information? That look-alike? No, her twin, her relative…who lived one hundred and fifty years ago? And what of the ghost next door—if he was still sitting there—who was that woman’s brother?

  She cupped her hands over her mouth.

  The door opened and there stood Nick. Tall, blond, imperial in his duty uniform, he halted before her.

  “Hi,” he said, his incomparable blue-green eyes flowing over her. “What’s going on?”

  Abby snatched a breath of air. What to tell him? I’m not only seeing ghosts but shades of myself? Oh, he’d love that one.

  Suddenly, he was on one knee in front of her, brushing his fingers through her hair to curl behind her ears. “Tell me.”

  “You won’t like it.”

  The corners of his eyes narrowed, creating fine lines that told her he was very concerned. “I don’t already.”

  “There’s a picture, a sketch of a woman in the showcases downstairs in the hall.”

  “And?” he prompted when she paused.

  “She looks exactly like me.”

  His smile was compassionate. “Honey, no one looks like you.”

  She shook her head. “Really she does.”

  “No one could ever be as lovely as you are.” He was serious.

  Warmth ran through her bloodstream. “Nick, you’re kind but there’s more—”

  “That…thing next door rattled you. And it shouldn’t. I said we were going to talk to the manager and we should. Now.” He got to his feet.

  She tugged him back down. “No. I won’t go. I don’t want to. Or need to.”

  “Abby, that receptionist set you up to see that…whatever the hell that thing is next door. And it’s not right.”

  “I think you’re right. She did know or hope that Mabry would show up, but I’ve gotten more information about him. I’m glad we saw Mabry. Really glad.”

  He frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Let me tell you what I learned.”

  “Okay,” he said, sounding skeptical. He stood, took her hands and led her to the comfortable chair where he sat and urged her onto his lap. One arm circled around her, and he examined her as if he had her under a microscope.

  Wonderful. Now he thinks I am certifiable.

  “I called my cousin who runs the Stuart family tree. She hadn’t returned my call this morning, and I wanted to talk to her anyway. I asked her if we had a Mabry Stuart in our ancestry, and we do.”

  Nick raised one brow. His hands were busy stroking the length of her hair down her shoulders. “So Mabry existed.”

  “He did. He left a record in the family Bible that after the Civil War, he went west to search for his sister.” Abby left out the bit about the sister leaving with the Union officer. That was a bit too much for a realist like her practical SEAL to take. Once she told him that, Nick would take her to the nearest ER and check her in. “Her name was Antoinette Stuart.”

  “And the drawing of the lady in the showcase downstairs is of this Antoinette?”

  “Well, she definitely is Antoinette Stuart. And she signed the portrait. Or I think the script is her handwriting.”

  “Why do you think it’s hers?”

  “A feeling.” Abby shrugged and offered him a small smile. How could she explain that when she herself had drawn him, she had seen him differently? With blond hair and lighter eyes, Nick was another man…yet the same. She was getting into woo-woo territory. A visit to the ER loomed. “The portrait is signed and dated. Besides, the date on the sketch is the same year that Mabry was checked in to the hotel.”

  “You have no proof it’s his sister.”

  She shook her head. “Too much coincidence otherwise.”

  He knit his brows, not looking at her as he continued to comb his fingers through her hair.

  “You think I’m a bit nuts,” she said with sadness rushing through her. “I’m not. I swear.”

  “I hear you,” he said, lost in his own thoughts. “Did you have lunch? Anything to eat since breakfast?”

  Ah. He thought she was light-headed. She’d change the subject gladly. “No. But I am starving.”

  He winked at her. “Me, too
. Promise me something.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “You won’t think about this for the rest of the evening.”

  “Okay. That’s easy.”

  “I’ll change and we’ll go have a huge Texas steak.”

  “Deal,” she told him. “And then I want to hear you sing.”

  He clamped a hand to his heart. “My best Elvis.”

  “Now, you are talking, sailor boy.” She got to her feet and tugged on his hands. “Up. Let’s go.”

  ****

  Two hours later, Nick led Abby into a Karaoke bar and dance club and asked for a table near the floor. He intended to take her mind off her troubles, and he’d do it with the only tools he had available. His time, his undivided attention and a pretty good baritone that many said sounded exactly like The King’s.

  He had insisted she order the biggest steak on the restaurant menu. He had, too, and they had washed down their dinners with hefty mugs of beer. Watching her take her chair, he saw her grin. Her eyes were clear, free of anxiety. She had obeyed him and left her concerns back in the hotel room. Thank heaven.

  Nick was definitely worried about Abby’s state of mind. Sure, she’d been antsy about seeing her brother. Absolutely, she had not reacted as impartially as she could have to Terry’s jabs. But then Abby was not trained to repel such anger or resentment. If and when she attended rehabilitation classes for her brother, she’d be more help to him and to herself.

  This matter with the apparition in room two-twenty-two, Mabry Stuart or not, caused her more problems. While Nick thought it might have been a diversion, something to talk about, laugh over, it was definitely getting spooky. He didn’t doubt that her cousin had found evidence of a Mabry. Why would someone play a hoax on their own family member by declaring a man existed who had not? The cousin had no skin in this game.

  But by god, he did.

  Aside from the fact he thought Abby was the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen, ever met, he admitted to himself that what he was feeling for her was so compelling it blew his mind. He seemed to know her so intricately, so well that he was mesmerized by her. The way she moved; he remembered her grace. The way she laughed; he could swear he’d heard somewhere long ago. The way her expressive lips formed words had him recalling similar words, a thousand times when he had watched her, heard her, made love to her.